Chris Albright is looking forward to another Donald Trump presidency. “I had more money in my pocket when Trump was president last time than what I do now,” he says, adding that in recent years inflation has sent prices skyrocketing for him and his family. “Eggs for example were like, 85 cents a dozen. They’re like $6, $7 a dozen right now”. Fuel costs have nearly doubled, he says. “It’s very difficult to get groceries and put gas in your car.”
These are common reasons people cite for voting for Trump. But Albright has another, very specific, reason to be optimistic about the change the US has just voted for. In February 2023, a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. It was the near-inevitable result of weak oversight and a largely self-regulating industry. Chemical fires blazed at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and the cars continued to burn for days — in some cases, authorities engaged in controlled burns which were later found to be unnecessary. Noxious pollution billowed from the fires like ink underwater, eventually spreading across an area of 540,000 square miles. Albright and his family live half a mile from the derailment.
“I lost my job because I ended up getting congestive heart failure, which turned into severe heart failure, and I wasn’t able to work for quite some time,” he says. “And then when I was able to finally go back to work, I found out that I was actually terminated back in November.”
Albright is just one of many East Palestine residents whose health has never been the same since the fires. He’s become an advocate for East Palestine and hopes the change in administration, including a vice president from Ohio, will see more get done. President Joe Biden, for example, never declared a state of disaster in the town and took more than a year to visit the community. Trump visited soon after the crisis began — Trump’s team have since said it turned the former and future president’s then-flailing campaign around.
“The Democrats, while in office, didn’t do anything to help us here,” Albright says. “The Republicans can come in now and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to clean up what they didn’t. We’re going to fix this.’ Almost kind of as a middle finger: ‘Hey, you guys wouldn’t do it. We will.’ Yeah, so I think we have a better shot at getting some assistance now, since [the Democrats] didn’t do anything.”
There is a phrase that has emerged in recent years to describe areas like East Palestine (and there are many). Places where resources and people have been wrung dry by corporations (Norfolk Southern took in more than US$12 billion the year of the derailment) and then abandoned. They are called “sacrifice zones”.
Albright is a member of “Justice for East Palestine Residents and Workers” which, alongside charitable works in the area, is advocating for the Stafford Act to be invoked. The Act, used during disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the Oklahoma City bombing, allows the president to access funds and disaster relief assistance set aside by Congress and is designed to help states get assistance from the federal government while they carry out their responsibilities. President Trump invoked the act over the COVID-19 pandemic. It’d “give everybody in the area free healthcare for the rest of their lives, and also the opportunity to relocate if they wish”, says Albright.
The coalition crosses state lines, but also party lines — alongside conservatives like Albright is self-described socialist and “lefty nut job” Maximillian Alvarez — in a way that you’d be forgiven for thinking wasn’t possible in 2024 America.
“Basically, politics don’t matter in a way. We’re all… on different aspects of the political fence, and we’re all going after the same goal,” he says. “So, like, to me, like I’m on the right side first tell you that, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing to me if you’re on the left, like there’s a lot of different things that are more important. Be a good person. You’re able to do that, then you know, everything’s good. Everything else falls into place.”
Albright also mentions that he feels Trump is less likely to lead the US into another disastrous war (not the first time I’ve heard that). “I think we’re going to start seeing some changes, as far as a lot of different policies and the border and migrants and, you know, America getting involved in wars.”
It’s one of many prominent examples of the disconnect in American life — in rhetoric, there is no group more venerated than veterans.
Restaurants encourage you to buy a vet a beer, and flight attendants ask veterans to make themselves known to staff before boarding. Over the weekend, I watched the Pittsburgh college football team the Panthers narrowly lose to the Virginia Cavaliers. The game opened with servicemen parachuting down into the centre of the field, the stars and stripes fluttering proudly behind them.
And then, in practically every break in play, they would be introduced — scores and scores of service men and women, their achievements and tours of duty listed, the charity work they did for their fellow “wounded warriors”. The crowd stood to applaud every time.
A doctor who works with veterans at Pittsburgh Veterans Affairs Hospital told me later that this is often the most support a returned soldier can hope for. In practice, veterans, often recruited from America’s lower socio-economic areas, are frequently left to rot.
Since 2016, veterans have been some of Trump’s most loyal voters.
